posted at 2:41 pm on October 4, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Ah, the argument by analogy — its potential for backfire knows few limits. After attorneys for Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, a first-term Republican vying for re-election, suggested that same-sex marriage would be the equivalent of allowing 12-year-olds to marry, Corbett tried to distance himself from the remarks. “I think a much better analogy,” Corbett told WHP-TV in Harrisburg, “would have been brother and sister, don’t you?”

“I’m going to leave the comments to you and your team,” the interviewer says with a laugh, refusing to get drawn into the what she clearly knew would be an eruption of outrage. And of course it followed soon after:

Mark Aronchick, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in that case, called Corbett’s remarks “insensitive, insulting and plainly wrong.”

“In other words, some kind of incestuous relationship,” Aronchick said. “He’s just out of touch on this one. Gay people marry for the same reasons straight people do — to express their love and to declare their commitment before friends and family.”

A Corbett spokesman offered no immediate comment Friday morning.

Ted Martin with Equality Pennsylvania, which advocates on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, called the governor’s remarks “shocking and hurtful” and asked him to apologize.

The replacement analogy was unfortunate politically, and it’s not even defensible philosophically. The issue of incest has nothing to do with the model of marriage. Why not stick to arguments that focus on the model itself?

The West has produced a milleniums-long model of marriage that has allowed for stable Western societies that are based on the procreative family structure, one man and one woman. It has also produced objective injustices around that model (bans on interracial marriage, and no-fault divorce on demand) but over the long haul has managed to hold that definition across many eras of changing mores. Partnered with full tolerance for other non-marriage cohabitation models, there isn’t any reason to redefine it to remove barriers simply on the basis of making people happy — although Pennsylvania voters are free to change public policy any way they choose.

Had Corbett just stuck to the latter point, he’d have been on firmer ground:

Corbett, a former federal prosecutor and two-term state attorney general, also said he does not think a pending legal challenge to Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage belongs in federal court.

“The Supreme Court left it up to the states to determine under their laws as to what is and isn’t a marriage,” Corbett said. “The federal court shouldn’t even be involved in this. But if they say they are, then they’re going to make a determination whether the state has the right to determine that a marriage is only between a man and a woman and not between two individuals of the same sex.”

That principle is worth defending in court no matter what one thinks of same-sex marriage. However, if an analogy has to be used, polygamy is the obvious choice. If the state can authorize same-sex marriage (and states obviously can), why stop at the two-person model? If the argument is that the state has no business picking and choosing what kind of relationships it should certify as valid marriages and that to do so is discriminatory (as activists usually argue instead in order to shame opponents), then what about plural marriages? After all, some religions represented in the US either tolerate or actively encourage such arrangements, which makes it closer to a First Amendment core issue than a hazy Fourteenth Amendment issue. Isn’t drawing the line at the two-person model just as discriminatory and arbitrary as drawing it at the heterosexual model?

Don’t expect that argument to win too many debates with the activists, but at least it’s a better political argument to make than relating same-sex marriage to incest — a lesson social conservatives should have learned years ago.

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A Canadian study by professor Douglas Allen of Simon Frazier University finds that children raised by married biological parents do better in school than children raised by same-sex couples. The study appears in the Review of Economics of the Household, which I understand is a peer-reviewed journal. … I wouldn’t presume to pronounce what marriage is; after all, I’m not a federal judge. But if I were to attempt a definition, the pragmatist in me would be tempted to exclude gender pairings that are not only incapable, by definition, of producing children, but also don’t raise them very successfully.

The Supreme Court has called marriage a fundamental civil right of man, and allowing homosexualspolygamists to marry each other is the only reasonable and realistic way for them to form real, stable, committed, faithful marriages. That’s the other big difference between gay marriagepolygamy as opposed to incestuous marriages or polygamyhomosexual unions. If you ban polygamyhomosexual marriage anyone still has a reasonable opportunity to exercise his or her fundamental civil right to get married, albeit to not as many not to same gendered people as they might like (can you hear the cries of anguish from the Hillary Clinton household over that?). It’s the same with incest. But with what we’ve learned about homosexuality polygamy over the last few decades, that it’s not a mental disorder, that it’s not harmful in and of itself, that people are basically born that way and can’t change,have practiced this act in their cultures for millennia it’s not really reasonable to expect them to marry someone of the opposite sexonly one person. So long as we’re forbidding it we are prohibiting their harmless exercise of what we’ve said is a fundamental right. We can’t do that, at least not morally or legally.

While you’re here I’ll ask you the same question I asked someone else earlier, melle. Does your objection to gay marriage rest solely in your belief that it will lead to the legalization of other things like incestuous marriage and polygamy or is your objection based on something else (and if so, what)?

alchemist19 on October 4, 2013 at 10:58 PM

Sorta.. My objection has more to do with protecting a sexuality ANY sexuality. Sexuality is complex and subjective, and it isn’t just hetero and homo. I think when you open that door; you open a can of worms. That being said, I don’t care if someone loves their sister, thinks they have three wives or is a man loving a man. Not my business, and I think life comes in different colors.

I also think that you are growing the government when you start recognizing every pairing. Those are my long term objections.

My short term objections is more about the use of the homosexual lobby as a bludgeon to take away the right of association, religious rights, and parental rights.

Senate Bill 274 authorizes a court to recognize more than two parents if endorsing fewer would be “detrimental” to the child.

…

[Sen. Mark] Leno’s measure grew out of an appellate court case involving a biological mother, her same-sex partner and a man who had an affair with the mother while she was temporarily separated from her female lover. In the 2011 case, the California Court of Appeal held that courts could not recognize more than two parents even if doing so would protect the child from harm

Senate Bill 274 authorizes a court to recognize more than two parents if endorsing fewer would be “detrimental” to the child.

We’ve been sliding down a slippery slope for 50 years, and every step of the way liberals have been chanting “there is no slippery slope”. This is all part of the methodology from the liberal playbook. Tell the public that wherever you are trying to push the sexual/social boundaries today represent the final limit of what liberalism really wants. And also tell the public that anyone who would argue otherwise is guilty of fearmongering and absurd slippery slope arguments. Remember way back when gay activists told us they were not asking for legal recognition of their relationships, all they wanted was the right not to be discriminated against when it came to issues of employment and housing? Back then anyone who raised warning flags and said that gay rights activits would come back later asking for legal recognition for their relationships was dismissed as a reactionary scaremongerer. But then a decade or so later the “fearmongerers” were proved correct and gay activists did come back and ask for legal of recognition of their relationships. But “we won’t demand it be called marriage” they promised back then. “Just give us equal rights under something of a different name called “civil unions”. Once again, SoCons who insisted marriage was the eventual goal of these activists were dismissed as scaremongerers. And then another decade went by and sure enough the new cry was that civil unions are not good enough. We must have same sex marriage. And once again those who warned that SSM would pave the way for the demolition of the two parent model for a family were dismissed as intolerant bigots who were engaged in fallacious slippery slope arguments. And so here we are with our first legal recognition of a 3 parent family. This is how liberalism advances. It keeps moving the goalposts by following the “frog in the kettle strategy” of warming the water up gradually so that the frog doesn’t realize it’s being boiled to death.

I have been arguing on these boards for awhile that if gay marriage made moms or dads expendible than it must be just the number that matters in parenting. If that is the case, then why is two the magic number? Why isn’t three better? And bingo! Here ya go!

This all leads to the communist model of communal parents. Like I remarked on the twitchy article, I have NEVER known a child to be in detriment because they only had two parents. In fact, more parents is going to be horrible for this child. When the lesbian breaks up with her partner again, this child now must be shuttled not only to her father’s house for visitation, but her mommy’s old partner’s home. And I just want to know when Mommy or Daddy or the Partner both get new partners; can they be declared a legal parent as well. The child completely gets lost in this ruling. This is all to feed the homosexual lobby and to make them feel the “same” as heterosexuals when they aren’t. Futhermore, this is giving them special privileges, because a heterosexual step-father has no rights to the child of his partner.

That’s the exact same specious argument states used to attempt to justify their bans on interracial marriage back in the 60s. Their thought was “Everyone has the same right to marry within their own race and so equal protection!” The courts saw straight through it and smacked that argument down.

That’s the exact same specious argument states used to attempt to justify their bans on interracial marriage back in the 60s. Their thought was “Everyone has the same right to marry within their own race and so equal protection!” The courts saw straight through it and smacked that argument down.

alchemist19 on October 5, 2013 at 2:31 PM

Actually you really need to read the Loving case. Whites were the ONLY race banned from intermarrying hence why SCOTUS felt that it violated equal protection. Same sex marriage would be the equivalent of interracial marriage if homosexuals were the ONLY group banned from same gender marriage. Everyone is banned from same gender pairings.

The moment I saw the headline, I knew there would be tons of comments about how offensive the analogy is. And it is offensive, but for the opposite reason.

I’m disappointed that Ed seems to climb on the bandwagon and assume that same-sex marriages are in some way less morally objectionable than incest.

Why exactly does everyone have a right to marry a person he or she is attracted to — UNLESS that person is a blood relative? Once you reject the meaning of marriage as it has always been understood, you have no reason to distinguish between polygamy, incest, or same-sex attractions.

Essentially, there is just as much reason to reject same-sex marriage as there is to reject a brother-sister marriage. The real difference is the instinctive recognition that a brother and sister who are married are actually married. Whether or not they should be, it is a real and actual marriage, and one that can produce children.

What makes it acceptable for the government to ban such marriages is the damage to society that could result from them. Yes, the actions of others can damage the kind of society we live in.

Same-sex marriage, by contrast, is an artificial construct that is not real. SCOTUS may be able to mandate legal recognition of such things, but they can never make them real.

Same-sex marriage is inherently more wrong than brother and sister. One of the big reasons we perceive an incestuous marriage as wrong is that it violates exactly one moral law: incest. But aside from that, it’s basically just like a regular marriage. The point of course is that the incest is bad enough.

And really, slippery slope arguments apply particularly well to marriage between relatives. While you won’t find defenders of brothers marrying sisters, the outrage is considerably lessened when it’s cousins marrying cousins, especially when it’s 3rd or 5th cousins. At a certain point, the relationship becomes distant enough that the marriage becomes less objectionable.

The governor’s offense is against the same PC party line that demands everyone accept same-sex marriages. If you believe that same-sex marriages are inherently wrong, as do most people in this country, then there’s no particular insult to compare them to something else that is wrong, such as brother-sister marriages. Both are thoroughly unnatural.

Can any proponent of homosexual marriage explain what a father shouldn’t be allowed to marry his son, and thereby avoid estate taxes? After all, they probably love each other and just want express it.

TitularHead on October 4, 2013 at 4:05 PM

Easy. Incestuous marriage alters the structure of an existing family unit

The same could be said of any man leaving his father and mother and being joined to his wife, and becoming one flesh. If a brother marries his sister and has children, then they have formed a new family unit just as much as if the girl he married was someone else’s daughter. Complete fail.

and serves no legitimate state interest

And now we invent the claim that marriage is only allowed to further a “legitimate state interest.” As if marriage was the invention of some state somewhere.

The state did not create the concept of marriage and/or family. It would be much more accurate to say that marriage creates families, and that families created the concept of a government. The first governments were based on tribes, which were simply very big and extended families.

so there’s no compelling reason for the state to recognizes.

The government has exactly the same “compelling reason” to recognize as it would any other marriage. The reason governments don’t allow incest is not because they are somehow qualitatively different from other marriages, but because incest is recognized as wrong, and marriage necessarily implies sexual relations.

Allowing homosexuals to marry each other forms a new stable family unit where none existed before.

Pure assertion does not make an argument. There is no reason to accept the claim that homosexuals form a new family unit. The idea seems to be to assert the claim, then call anyone a bigot who argues it.

That’s the difference between gay marriage and incest (or polygamy) and why we should allow the former but not the latter.

alchemist19 on October 4, 2013 at 4:32 PM

You have strung together non-existent distinctions, new arguments claiming that the state “permits” marriage IF it serves a “legitimate state interest,” assertion without proof that homosexuals who marry have formed a “new family unit,” and a claim that those claimed “family units” are stable without any reason to believe they would be.

You invent new facts, new distinctions, and new arguments in search of your preferred conclusion. It would be far too kind to call this crazy quilt of “reasoning” an argument by assertion. It’s more of an “argument by pulling things out of my a** as needed.”

Because we as a nation have decided the creation of new family units is in the best interest of society (a conclusion that I think is pretty well supported) so we’re going to create legal structures to encourage it (something I don’t support but I’ve lost that argument nationally so I’m dealing with it and trying to make the best of it). Once we’ve decided we are going to confer those benefits then we’re obligated to treat our enforcement of those laws in accordance with the Constitution. If the Windsors were sisters their marriage would not create a new family (they are already one) so the state doesn’t get anything out of it and they’re legally justified in not recognizing that union. With unrelated homosexuals like what the Windsors actually were they are not a family unit in the eyes of the state until they are legally married so there is an interest in recognizing and rewarding those unions.

alchemist19 on October 4, 2013 at 5:23 PM

Right. I remember the long discussion in the Federalist Papers about how the Founding Fathers felt we needed to encourage the creation of new family structures, and discussed the most effective legal structures to accomplish it. I believe it’s right in there with the creation of patents and copyrights.

Fortunately, the new “marriage” construct proved so popular in the US that Europe implemented it shortly afterward. Then it spread across the world, until finally two hundred years from now an inventor created the first time machine and went back to the dawn of time to make sure all people everywhere were able to take advantage of this new legal structure. The tricky part was spending that long afternoon explaining the concept to Jesus so He could issue the famous statement about a man leaving his father and mother and being joined to a woman, and the two of them becoming one flesh. If only Jesus had paid attention to the bit about “being joined to a man OR a woman, according to preferred sexual orientation.”

You know better.

So, tell me again how you’re only defending the Constitution, even though it says absolutely nothing about marriage. Hypocrisy is so much fun!

Actually you really need to read the Loving case. Whites were the ONLY race banned from intermarrying hence why SCOTUS felt that it violated equal protection. Same sex marriage would be the equivalent of interracial marriage if homosexuals were the ONLY group banned from same gender marriage. Everyone is banned from same gender pairings.

melle1228 on October 5, 2013 at 3:00 PM

Where in the Loving opinion do you see that? Whenever I see references to Equal Protection in that opinion they appear to be talking about race-based limitations in general, not that white people specifically were having their rights violated.

But since we’re reading back through the Loving decision I’m reminded of how unfounded the worries about polygamy and incest being around the corner are. As I’ve pointed out, gay marriage bans prevent any reasonable opportunity for homosexuals to enter into a legal marriage. Anti-miscegenation laws still allow people to have a reasonable opportunity to get married, just not to a group of people the state feels they should not be marrying. That’s the line of reasoning that lead the dissenters in Perez v. Sharp (a case decided by the California Supreme Court in 1948 that overturned that state’s ban on interracial marriage) when they claimed that once the prohibitions on people of different races marrying each other that legalized bigamy and incestuous marriage was right around the corner. That was 65 years ago, over a quarter of the time since the founding of this nation. Seems all their fears, paranoia and doomsaying were totally unjustified, no?

The same could be said of any man leaving his father and mother and being joined to his wife, and becoming one flesh. If a brother marries his sister and has children, then they have formed a new family unit just as much as if the girl he married was someone else’s daughter. Complete fail.

If a brother marries his sister they were already family and so the benefits the state derives from a new family forming where none existed before aren’t realized. Or did you decide to stick your foot in your mouth before you saw where I explained that later?

And now we invent the claim that marriage is only allowed to further a “legitimate state interest.” As if marriage was the invention of some state somewhere.

The state did not create the concept of marriage and/or family. It would be much more accurate to say that marriage creates families, and that families created the concept of a government. The first governments were based on tribes, which were simply very big and extended families.

It doesn’t matter who “invented” marriage. It’s a matter of what the state will and won’t recognize. Are you trying to confuse the issue or are you just confused yourself?

The government has exactly the same “compelling reason” to recognize as it would any other marriage. The reason governments don’t allow incest is not because they are somehow qualitatively different from other marriages, but because incest is recognized as wrong, and marriage necessarily implies sexual relations.

That’s a relief! Because the government has already recognized the sexual relations of homosexuals as fully legal (see: Lawrence v. Texas in 2003) so if that’s the line you’re using then gay marriage is fine and dandy. Nice to see you’ve seen the light!

Pure assertion does not make an argument. There is no reason to accept the claim that homosexuals form a new family unit. The idea seems to be to assert the claim, then call anyone a bigot who argues it.

I do my best to refrain from calling people “bigots”. If someone truly is a bigot then I won’t hesitate to call a spade a spade but if they’re simply suffering from a wont of careful reflection or they’ve been lead astray by charlatans, morons or other similarly confused people to misunderstand that once gay marriage is legalized that polygamy and incest are right around the corner then I try to point out the error in their reasoning.

Just to clarify here because what you’re saying makes no sense at all the way you’ve written it, I need one question answered. From what you’ve posted here you would seem to be saying Edie Windsor (the woman who won the DOMA case) and her partner were not a family. Am I understanding you correctly? And if I am, would they have been a family if one of the two had had a penis instead?

You have strung together non-existent distinctions, new arguments claiming that the state “permits” marriage IF it serves a “legitimate state interest,” assertion without proof that homosexuals who marry have formed a “new family unit,” and a claim that those claimed “family units” are stable without any reason to believe they would be.

You invent new facts, new distinctions, and new arguments in search of your preferred conclusion. It would be far too kind to call this crazy quilt of “reasoning” an argument by assertion. It’s more of an “argument by pulling things out of my a** as needed.”

There Goes the Neighborhood on October 5, 2013 at 7:32 PM

Were Edie Windsor and her partner not a stable unit? They were together, faithful and committed to each other for 40 years. If only more couples could say that.

Which facts did I invent? Just because something is inconvenient, contrary or otherwise devastating to your opinion does not necessarily mean that thing isn’t true, you know.

The same could be said of any man leaving his father and mother and being joined to his wife, and becoming one flesh. If a brother marries his sister and has children, then they have formed a new family unit just as much as if the girl he married was someone else’s daughter. Complete fail.

If a brother marries his sister they were already family and so the benefits the state derives from a new family forming where none existed before aren’t realized. Or did you decide to stick your foot in your mouth before you saw where I explained that later?

And now we invent the claim that marriage is only allowed to further a “legitimate state interest.” As if marriage was the invention of some state somewhere.

The state did not create the concept of marriage and/or family. It would be much more accurate to say that marriage creates families, and that families created the concept of a government. The first governments were based on tribes, which were simply very big and extended families.

It doesn’t matter who “invented” marriage. It’s a matter of what the state will and won’t recognize. Are you trying to confuse the issue or are you just confused yourself?

The government has exactly the same “compelling reason” to recognize as it would any other marriage. The reason governments don’t allow incest is not because they are somehow qualitatively different from other marriages, but because incest is recognized as wrong, and marriage necessarily implies sexual relations.

That’s a relief! Because the government has already recognized the sexual relations of homosexuals as fully legal (see: Lawrence v. Texas in 2003) so if that’s the line you’re using then gay marriage is fine and dandy. Nice to see you’ve seen the light!

Pure assertion does not make an argument. There is no reason to accept the claim that homosexuals form a new family unit. The idea seems to be to assert the claim, then call anyone a bigot who argues it.

I do my best to refrain from calling people “bigots”. If someone truly is a bigot then I won’t hesitate to call a spade a spade but if they’re simply suffering from a wont of careful reflection or they’ve been led astray by charlatans, morons or other similarly confused people to misunderstand that once gay marriage is legalized that polygamy and incest are right around the corner then I try to point out the error in their reasoning.

Just to clarify here because what you’re saying makes no sense at all the way you’ve written it, I need one question answered. From what you’ve posted here you would seem to be saying Edie Windsor (the woman who won the DOMA case) and her partner were not a family. Am I understanding you correctly? And if I am, would they have been a family if one of the two had had boy parts (can I not say the clinical term without being flagged?) instead?

You have strung together non-existent distinctions, new arguments claiming that the state “permits” marriage IF it serves a “legitimate state interest,” assertion without proof that homosexuals who marry have formed a “new family unit,” and a claim that those claimed “family units” are stable without any reason to believe they would be.

You invent new facts, new distinctions, and new arguments in search of your preferred conclusion. It would be far too kind to call this crazy quilt of “reasoning” an argument by assertion. It’s more of an “argument by pulling things out of my a** as needed.”

There Goes the Neighborhood on October 5, 2013 at 7:32 PM

Which facts have I invented? Just because something is inconvenient, contrary or otherwise devastating to your beliefs it doesn’t mean that thing is necessarily false, you know. Sometimes you’re just wrong about things, even if it’s something you feel very strongly about.

Right. I remember the long discussion in the Federalist Papers about how the Founding Fathers felt we needed to encourage the creation of new family structures, and discussed the most effective legal structures to accomplish it. I believe it’s right in there with the creation of patents and copyrights.

The Founding Fathers didn’t write the Fourteenth Amendment. You knew that, right? Like I said to melle, my personal preference is that the government not recognize marriages for any purpose but I’ve lost that argument so I’m making the best out of the current situation.

Fortunately, the new “marriage” construct proved so popular in the US that Europe implemented it shortly afterward. Then it spread across the world, until finally two hundred years from now an inventor created the first time machine and went back to the dawn of time to make sure all people everywhere were able to take advantage of this new legal structure. The tricky part was spending that long afternoon explaining the concept to Jesus so He could issue the famous statement about a man leaving his father and mother and being joined to a woman, and the two of them becoming one flesh. If only Jesus had paid attention to the bit about “being joined to a man OR a woman, according to preferred sexual orientation.”

You know better.

Like I said in my earlier response to you, it doesn’t matter who invented marriage or what any particular religious figure or texts said about it. What is at issue is what the government does. All of the former are irrelevant to the latter.

So, tell me again how you’re only defending the Constitution, even though it says absolutely nothing about marriage. Hypocrisy is so much fun!

There Goes the Neighborhood on October 5, 2013 at 7:45 PM

I’m defending the part of the Constitution that says all citizens of a state are entitled to equal protection under the law.

I changed your nonsensical post to show how easily it could be used to argue for polygamy based on using your faulty logic. That you cannot see that says more about you than my remarks.

njrob on October 6, 2013 at 12:57 AM

The edit job you did is both less than a tenth as clever as you think it is, and is an example of why I have no respect for your intelligence. Please note I don’t say that just because we disagree on this issue; I disagree with melle on this matter but I respect her as an intelligent person. You, though, come up well short. I will illustrate.

I made several points about things that we have learned about the nature of homosexuality over the last few decades that have reshaped our perception and understanding of it. I pointed out that we mistakenly believed homosexuality was a mental illness. Polygamists were never held to be mentally ill just because they were polygamists. There is also nothing really new we’ve learned about polygamy in the last few decades that we didn’t know before whereas we’ve only recently come to understand that not only is homosexuality not a mental illness, it is merely a natural part of how some people are. That’s why your changing a point I made about how we’ve learned about homosexuals being born that way and unable to change to a statement about polygamy being practiced for years (which is an argumentum ad antiquitam logical fallacy to boot) doesn’t make even the slightest bit of sense. Basically what you’ve done is replaced facts with fallacies and untruths to turn a strong, supported argument into a shell of its former self and in the end you think you’ve done something clever to discredit the original. The best analogy I can come up with for what you’ve done would be if you show a four-year-old the Mona Lisa, ask them to copy it, they draw a stick figure which you look at and claim is terrible and so therefore the Mona Lisa itself is lousy. It’s an almost comically bad effort on your part. Lie down before you hurt yourself.

Right. I remember the long discussion in the Federalist Papers about how the Founding Fathers felt we needed to encourage the creation of new family structures, and discussed the most effective legal structures to accomplish it. I believe it’s right in there with the creation of patents and copyrights.

The Founding Fathers didn’t write the Fourteenth Amendment. You knew that, right? Like I said to melle, my personal preference is that the government not recognize marriages for any purpose but I’ve lost that argument so I’m making the best out of the current situation.

Are you really going to try to hang your hat on this? The Fourteenth Amendment also does not address marriage, so — once again — your sham claim that the Constitution set up legal structures to encourage the creation of new family structures is revealed for the sophistry it is.

Fortunately, the new “marriage” construct proved so popular in the US that Europe implemented it shortly afterward. Then it spread across the world, until finally two hundred years from now an inventor created the first time machine and went back to the dawn of time to make sure all people everywhere were able to take advantage of this new legal structure. The tricky part was spending that long afternoon explaining the concept to Jesus so He could issue the famous statement about a man leaving his father and mother and being joined to a woman, and the two of them becoming one flesh. If only Jesus had paid attention to the bit about “being joined to a man OR a woman, according to preferred sexual orientation.”

You know better.

Like I said in my earlier response to you, it doesn’t matter who invented marriage or what any particular religious figure or texts said about it. What is at issue is what the government does. All of the former are irrelevant to the latter.

It’s pretty relevant to your claim that the Constitution created legal structures to foster the creation of new family units, which is your central argument for why same-sex marriages are okay, but blood-relative marriages are outside the pale.

But it’s nice how the argument becomes irrelevant once it’s clear you’re lost it.

So, tell me again how you’re only defending the Constitution, even though it says absolutely nothing about marriage. Hypocrisy is so much fun!

There Goes the Neighborhood on October 5, 2013 at 7:45 PM

I’m defending the part of the Constitution that says all citizens of a state are entitled to equal protection under the law.

Why do you hate the Constitution?

No, you’re trying to argue that “equal protection” means men must be allowed to marry men, even though a village idiot can grasp that from the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment until just a few years ago, absolutely nobody interpreted equal protection to require the government to state that homosexuality is equivalent to normal sexuality.

This is more of the same crap we’ve seen over and over again, where a law or legal structure is set up and agreed upon with a meaning that everyone understands and accepts, then a judge comes along and claims it means something else entirely.

BTW, I also reject the claim that the Constitution created a right to abortion. The Constitution says nothing about abortion, and nothing about men marrying men, and anyone who claims to be “sticking up for the Constitution” on either issue is simply lying.

You have been arguing by assertion with your insane claim that a homosexual couple joining in a union somehow creates a new family unit, but a relative marrying another does not. It is nonsensical, has never been claimed by even this corrupt government and would be laughed out of court immediately.

You also claim as fact that it is KNOWN that homosexuality is not an illness, but is genetic. There is no evidence supporting that claim, and biological studies of twins where one is homosexual and the other isn’t shows the exact opposite. The politicization of the AMA to remove homosexuality as an illness has nothing to do with facts.

Try and learn something next time. I have no respect for you because you are dishonest and do not cite any evidence for your claims. Your words are the definition of a dishonest, bad faith argument.

Are you really going to try to hang your hat on this? The Fourteenth Amendment also does not address marriage, so — once again — your sham claim that the Constitution set up legal structures to encourage the creation of new family structures is revealed for the sophistry it is.

The Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t address marriage directly but it does mandate the states protect people equally under their laws. States have chosen to recognize and protect marriages because the state derives some benefit from them. Since homosexual marriages provide the same benefit that heterosexual marriages do the Fourteenth Amendment forces the state to protect it in an identical fashion so long as they are providing those same benefits to heterosexual unions. I’m very happy to deliver the Constitutional lesson that was so sorely needed.

It’s pretty relevant to your claim that the Constitution created legal structures to foster the creation of new family units, which is your central argument for why same-sex marriages are okay, but blood-relative marriages are outside the pale.

But it’s nice how the argument becomes irrelevant once it’s clear you’re lost it.

Again, I never claimed that. A state’s legal structures foster the creation of new family units, the Constitution mandates equal protection.

No, you’re trying to argue that “equal protection” means men must be allowed to marry men,

It does for as long as we’re sanctioning heterosexual unions.

even though a village idiot can grasp that from the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment until just a few years ago, absolutely nobody interpreted equal protection to require the government to state that homosexuality is equivalent to normal sexuality.

The government isn’t saying that homosexuality is equivalent to heterosexuality, at least they aren’t in the marriage debate. You could argue they sort of said that in the Lawrence case a decade ago but that’s not the issue here. It is true though that until recently when we’ve come to better understand the nature of homosexuality that it was tougher to bring a case on Fourteenth Amendment grounds (the history of Baker v. Nelson speaks to this), but now that we know better there is no longer any reason to keep on with what we now realize were mistakes in the past.

This is more of the same crap we’ve seen over and over again, where a law or legal structure is set up and agreed upon with a meaning that everyone understands and accepts, then a judge comes along and claims it means something else entirely.

Just like when we figured out there was no meaningful difference between people because of their race and we had to change the laws we agreed upon in order to correct our error.

BTW, I also reject the claim that the Constitution created a right to abortion. The Constitution says nothing about abortion, and nothing about men marrying men, and anyone who claims to be “sticking up for the Constitution” on either issue is simply lying.

There Goes the Neighborhood on October 7, 2013 at 1:29 AM

Why are you trying to confuse the gay marriage issue by dragging abortion into it? It sounds like I’m about where you are on abortion anyway.

You have been arguing by assertion with your insane claim that a homosexual couple joining in a union somehow creates a new family unit, but a relative marrying another does not.

How is two unrelated homosexuals marrying each other not forming a new family but two heterosexuals doing the same thing somehow is? And are relatives not already family?

It is nonsensical, has never been claimed by even this corrupt government and would be laughed out of court immediately.

The idea that two homosexuals marrying each other forms a family would be laughed out of court? You don’t get out much or follow the news, do you?

You also claim as fact that it is KNOWN that homosexuality is not an illness, but is genetic.

It’s not an illness though I don’t think I’ve used the term “genetic”. It’s a bit more complex than that.

There is no evidence supporting that claim, and biological studies of twins where one is homosexual and the other isn’t shows the exact opposite.

Which is why I’ve not used the term “genetic” because the root cause of homosexuality isn’t in the genes themselves. I’m guessing you don’t know what an epi-mark is, do you? Educate yourself.

The politicization of the AMA to remove homosexuality as an illness has nothing to do with facts.

This statement is interesting in light of what you’re about to say.

Try and learn something next time. I have no respect for you because you are dishonest and do not cite any evidence for your claims. Your words are the definition of a dishonest, bad faith argument.

njrob on October 7, 2013 at 11:16 AM

And here you’ve stepped in it again. You claim the AMA was politicized in their removing homosexuality as an illness. By doing that you’ve basically poisoned them as a source for any information because it’s tainted by politics so I can’t offer up the evidence from them which you are critical of me for not giving, and at the same time you’ve offered up no evidence to support your statement that the AMA has been politicized and that’s what lead them to their recognition that homosexuality is not a mental illness. So in the space of three sentences you yourself have committed the exact same crime you’ve falsely accused me of. Is this the best that you’ve got?

After all your prolix responses and sub-responses, we can see that you are in favor of gay-marriage but you can’t say how incest and polygamy cannot be justified on the same ideas of “civil rights”.

Maybe you think its fine, but can’t say.

virgo on October 7, 2013 at 2:22 PM

I’ve explained that at length.

Marriage rights for homosexual couples can be allowed while prohibitions on incest and polygamy can be maintained for two reasons. First, allowing unrelated homosexuals to form a new family unit where none exited before is to the benefit of the state so the state has a reason to grant that union recognition. Incest and polygamy occur within existing family units and change the roles of members of a family significantly and that’s to the state’s detriment. Polygamy in particular doesn’t even fit within the legal constructs of current marriage rights and privileges when it comes to things like inheritance, power of attorney, etc. whereas gay marriage does very easily. Secondly, since marriage has been ruled to be a fundamental civil right in this country for as long as we’re banning gay marriage we are abridging the that fundamental right for homosexuals because we’re preventing them from having any reasonable opportunity to get married and exercise the fundamental right they are entitled to. If we maintain our prohibition on incest and polygamy people still have a reasonable opportunity to get married so they’re not having their marriage right completely stripped from them (particularly in the case of the latter).

Since you missed things I said earlier I’ll also repeat that when the Supreme Court of California overturned the state’s law against interracial marriage in 1948 the dissenting justices who supported the ban said with it struck down that incest and polygamy were right around the corner. That was 65 years ago, they were dead wrong.

As for the length of my responses, the trouble is people keep saying things that have a mountain of evidence against it and the temptation is to present the whole mountain at once. I’ll make an effort to keep it shorter when the people on the other side make an effort to be better informed.

Sorry, not getting it. What is this “fundamental civil right” to gay-marriage? Is it in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Ten Commandments, what? No, you just made it up.

As for polygamy, no, it doesn’t have to be within the family. I suspect you knew that, but were typing too fast to notice.

Nobody is saying that incest and polygamy will necessarily follow, just that there is no logic in the gay-marriage legal-opinion-du-jour to prevent it. Thus, bad law – likely to be be overturned in a relatively short time.

Marriage itself is a fundamental right that has been recognized numerous times, or so the Supreme Court. It’s generally held to be a part of the Due Process Clause. In my attempt to avoid a prolix post I’ll only highlight two examples in particular that deal respectively with state restrictions on marriage, and on the rights of homosexuals.

In the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 was the following:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence

So marriage is a right according to our current legal understanding. Unless we’re one of the most uncivilized societies on God’s green earth I think we can all agree that a homosexual is in fact a person who is entitled to the basic civil rights of man. Those rights include marriage. And since only reasonable opportunity for homosexuals to get married is if we allow them to marry each other then we are pretty much obligated to allow same-sex marriage.

Credit to you if you’re not making the slippery slope argument that gay marriage will lead to incest and polygamy; I do think you’re wrong though when you say that nobody believes in said slope. Just off the top of my head, Rick Santorum appears to.

But if you’re not employing the slippery slope and your objection is that there’s nothing in the “gay-marriage-legal-opinion-du-jour” then your position doesn’t make a lot of sense because polygamy and incest are in no way related to the gay marriage issue. You might as well be critical of the gay marriage legal opinion for not saying anything about bank robbery.